The DataGridViewCellStyle class lets you share style information across multiple DataGridView cells, rows, columns, and row or column headers, avoiding the memory requirements of setting style properties on individual cells. For more information about classes that have a property of type DataGridViewCellStyle and how they relate to each other, see Cell Styles in the Windows Forms DataGridView Control.

The following code example demonstrates the effect of setting properties on multiple DataGridViewCellStyle objects. This example sets the background color of cells in the DataGridView by setting the BackColor property on the DefaultCellStyle property. The background color is overridden on alternating rows because the BackColor property is set on the AlternatingRowsDefaultCellStyle property. The example also determines the format of dates in the column named Last Prepared by setting the Format property on the column's DefaultCellStyle property.